Single post in Dev Log 204
Forum Index > Core > Announcements > Dev Log 204 >
![Niet [Adam]'s Avatar](https://pokefarm.com/upload/:J/avatar/Niet_Icon150.png)
Well that was a lot of questions. Hopefully Garthic's answers help address a lot of the immediate concerns. I've also been taking notes and will be using your feedback to (hopefully!) improve my Dev Log posts. I would just ask for some patience though. It's a massive change going from long silence to informative posts, and I'm sure mistakes will be made. I'm trying :)
Today I'm bringing a big patch to PFQ, containing four updates varying from minor to significant. In that order: 1. Right-mouse-button clicks in Fields Suggestion The right mouse button no longer pops up the context menu on Fields when clicking, so you can use both mouse buttons to "twiddle" your fingers and get more clicks with less physical movement. So that's cool. 2. "Nothing" in Boxes (Suggested by Garthic in my DMs) This has been removed. There is no longer a 1% chance of Boxes containing Nothing. Instead, that percentage point has been added to the Big GP reward. Woot loot! 3. Z-Crystals at any time Suggestion 1 - Suggestion 2 If you activated your Albino Radar without a Z-Crystal, and then decide you wanted to use one after all, you can do that. You will need to pay the IP cost again (same as charging to a higher level, you don't get a refund) but at least now you don't have to wait until the next day any more. If you used a Z-Crystal, however, you can't change items. You're stuck with that Crystal until the end of the day. This only applies if you didn't use a Crystal to begin with. 4. Egg Timer overhaul Suggestion, as amended by Garthic The Egg Timer has received the following adjustments: - It now uses Party Clicks, not Field Clicks. This is to encourage interacting with more people, not with the same people repeatedly. - The number of interactions required to reach max level has been reduced accordingly. - EXP gained per hour has not changed. This is going to be a tough one to balance, but that's what's been done so far and we'll see how it goes and if it needs changing again in future.
These updates will be going live shortly after this post. In particular your Egg Timer level will reset, as it shifts from counting all interactions to counting Party interactions. This is something it wasn't counting at all before, so it has no data for today and must start over. I apologise for the inconvenience.
EDIT: I forgot an update I did the other day! Kinaster's breeding rate has been greatly improved. So that should help there.
As a general note regarding the "Approved Suggestions", many of the older ones are entire features that were considered "nice to have", back when PFQ was still in early days and we didn't have any particular direction we were going in. I need to review those ones and decide if they still fit with the game we have today. Several of them, I feel, don't. As Garthic touched on, work continues almost daily on back-end things. The bits that you never actually see, but that are nevertheless essential to keeping the game running. On that note, Dom (aka "Server Guy" - the contact at our hosting company who helps keep the server running) has been investigating the lag. We believe it to somehow be related to connection issues between the main server (the one running code) and the database server. For some reason, they don't always talk to each other properly, and that's where the lag appears to be coming from. We've already found one issue that was contributing to it - an issue in some security software was blocking connection ports. That issue was reported and the bug was fixed, so in a way you guys playing this game helped improve the Internet for millions of websites! But there remain other factors that are still a mystery and are being worked on. Thank you for your patience during this time.
Finally, I'd like to just mention that we're doing several Dev Log posts close together to get the ball rolling, but gradually - over the next weeks and months - we'll be scaling it back to a more routine occurrence, possibly once per week. Just mentioning that now so there's no worry when we slow down the posts later on. Dev Log Discussion #2
Today I'm bringing a big patch to PFQ, containing four updates varying from minor to significant. In that order: 1. Right-mouse-button clicks in Fields Suggestion The right mouse button no longer pops up the context menu on Fields when clicking, so you can use both mouse buttons to "twiddle" your fingers and get more clicks with less physical movement. So that's cool. 2. "Nothing" in Boxes (Suggested by Garthic in my DMs) This has been removed. There is no longer a 1% chance of Boxes containing Nothing. Instead, that percentage point has been added to the Big GP reward. Woot loot! 3. Z-Crystals at any time Suggestion 1 - Suggestion 2 If you activated your Albino Radar without a Z-Crystal, and then decide you wanted to use one after all, you can do that. You will need to pay the IP cost again (same as charging to a higher level, you don't get a refund) but at least now you don't have to wait until the next day any more. If you used a Z-Crystal, however, you can't change items. You're stuck with that Crystal until the end of the day. This only applies if you didn't use a Crystal to begin with. 4. Egg Timer overhaul Suggestion, as amended by Garthic The Egg Timer has received the following adjustments: - It now uses Party Clicks, not Field Clicks. This is to encourage interacting with more people, not with the same people repeatedly. - The number of interactions required to reach max level has been reduced accordingly. - EXP gained per hour has not changed. This is going to be a tough one to balance, but that's what's been done so far and we'll see how it goes and if it needs changing again in future.
These updates will be going live shortly after this post. In particular your Egg Timer level will reset, as it shifts from counting all interactions to counting Party interactions. This is something it wasn't counting at all before, so it has no data for today and must start over. I apologise for the inconvenience.
EDIT: I forgot an update I did the other day! Kinaster's breeding rate has been greatly improved. So that should help there.
As a general note regarding the "Approved Suggestions", many of the older ones are entire features that were considered "nice to have", back when PFQ was still in early days and we didn't have any particular direction we were going in. I need to review those ones and decide if they still fit with the game we have today. Several of them, I feel, don't. As Garthic touched on, work continues almost daily on back-end things. The bits that you never actually see, but that are nevertheless essential to keeping the game running. On that note, Dom (aka "Server Guy" - the contact at our hosting company who helps keep the server running) has been investigating the lag. We believe it to somehow be related to connection issues between the main server (the one running code) and the database server. For some reason, they don't always talk to each other properly, and that's where the lag appears to be coming from. We've already found one issue that was contributing to it - an issue in some security software was blocking connection ports. That issue was reported and the bug was fixed, so in a way you guys playing this game helped improve the Internet for millions of websites! But there remain other factors that are still a mystery and are being worked on. Thank you for your patience during this time.
Finally, I'd like to just mention that we're doing several Dev Log posts close together to get the ball rolling, but gradually - over the next weeks and months - we'll be scaling it back to a more routine occurrence, possibly once per week. Just mentioning that now so there's no worry when we slow down the posts later on. Dev Log Discussion #2
Clip from Pokémon anime, re-lined by me
-- OMNOMNOM!Featured story:
Injustice
Feedback welcome!
